


So Hard To Be A Saint In The City

by inlovewithnight



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set during the "Under the Hood" arc.</p>
    </blockquote>





	So Hard To Be A Saint In The City

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the "Under the Hood" arc.

Jason remembers dying.

He was still moving when the bomb went off, still fighting his body's pain and mortality, still aware. He remembers the heat of the explosion on his face before the shock hit him and made things dark. Since coming back he's learned that it also would have pulverized his organs, overwhelmed all of his systems, turned him into a bag of slime held in by torn-up skin and left him dead well before the flames and debris had a chance. He doesn't remember that part. He remembers the heat, and the dark.

He remembers coming back to life, too. There was a split second between when his spirit, his soul, whatever is _him_ found his body and when the reflexive systems took over, making his heart beat, making him breathe. That second felt as long as eternity. And he should know.

He remembers his last thought before the dark, and his first thought before his eyes opened. It's easy, because they're the same.

The last word that crossed his lips before he died was _Mom_. The first thing he forced from his painfully restored lungs was _Batman_. But the last and first thoughts, safe and silent in his mind, were _Bruce_.

_Bruce_ and _help me_.   
***   
He doesn't loom quite so large in Bruce's thoughts. Obviously.

Batman remembers. He can see that in the extra edge of discipline he lays on Robin. (On both Robins; he was replaced twice over, and doesn't that say something about loyalty and memory and love?) His death changed Batman, changed Robin. That almost matters. But it matters much, much more that it doesn't seem to have changed Bruce.

Maybe he isn't being fair. But if there's one thing he's learned from being Jason Todd (not Robin, maybe he didn't learn anything from being Robin) it's that life's not fair. Apparently it's not just, either.

But he's going to work on that.   
***   
It's not hard to re-learn Gotham. Gotham remembers him, welcomes him home. She doesn't love him-- she doesn't love anything-- but she's not disturbed by him. He's not any stranger than a lot of things she's seen.

The streets are different, since the earthquake and the rebuilding. He should have been here for that, for the devastation and No Man's Land, taking care of his city. Not his the way she's Batman's, not a _possession_. More like family. In his blood and bones, under his skin. His hometown.

He follows the bones of the city, down under the new layout of streets, and she helps him find her new shadows and darknesses fast enough. The essential spirit of her hasn't changed. Never will. That's what makes her Gotham. He wouldn't have her any way but dark.

It's what makes her home.  
***  
He has so many _plans_. They get jumbled and crossed and he can't keep track, can't prioritize.

The gang wars and the gun shipments and all that, those don't even count as plans, those are just necessary steps en route to his endgames. It's _those_ he can't seem to keep track of, can't keep in order. What is it that he wants, in the end?

He wants some things broken and other things put back together but which is which? That's what gets scrambled. Like eggs. Like a bad signal.

It doesn't make any sense that it's so hard to remember. He remembers so much from before, so many inconsequential little things, and he remembers _everything_ about those horrible matching moments of dying and coming back. But things from the now, and plans for the future, shift and fall through his mind like gravel, like brick crumbling under his hands. He doesn't know if that's a part of him that came back wrong or if he's always been this way. He never had to make the plans before. He just had to survive, and then he just had to be loyal.

Things are different now.  
***  
He has these _dreams_.

Dreams that make him wake up sweaty and scared, but he doesn't have to bother to check the security of his safehouse because what he's scared of is himself. It's the part of him that's still dead, that's what's growing these dreams, putting these pictures in his head. He doesn't want them. Didn't ask. He isn't going to do these things.

But he could. Oh, god, he _could_. The dreams are obscenely detailed, and when he wakes up he remembers, he knows, he could replicate them like every action was rehearsed. Which is what the dreams are for, of course. Nighttime rehearsals of the things he could do if he wanted, if he got angry enough, if he got _dark_ enough.

_Pretty damn dark in here already, isn't it, Jay?_

It's the wrong kind of darkness, that's the problem. Grave-dark, behind-his-eyelids-dark, not smog-dark or broken-streetlight-dark like Gotham. So he goes out the window and runs the streets until dawn.  
***  
This one dream's been the worst lately. Over and over and over again, every time he closes his eyes. Plausible. Possible. Not _easy_, but not difficult, and--

_I wouldn't do that_.

He tries drawing it, just to get it out of his head and down on paper. It's a crude sketch--black lines for the bars, a haphazard swirl of blue for Nightwing, a childish scrawl in the margin ("Dickiebird in a cage") for the first words he says in the dream, a malevolent snarl that's not his (_not mine not me_) but all Red Hood's. Cruel and amused and out for blood. Red Hood's the killer, the mastermind, the criminal, the one who does the work while Jason Todd screams.

_You're dead, Jay. Even had a funeral. Shut up already._

He doesn't have the skill to draw the next part of the dream; it's nothing but raw scrawls of color on the page. He can see it, though. Dick on the floor, hands tied and ankles broken (_can't jump can't **fly**, so much for the acrobat_), and Jason standing over him, kicking and kicking and there's no hood, no Hood, not even the mask, it's _Jason_ and then there's a crowbar in his hand and he laughs--

He shreds the papers and he runs.  
***  
He cuts a path through Gotham that ought to get more attention than it does. Any other city in the world, with its own cape-and-mask type or without, and he would've been tagged and tracked down by now. Not here, though. Not in this twisted city that made him the first time and welcomed him back when he was re-made by death. He fits right in here.

Beat-up dealers, burned-out buildings, blown-up cars. He doesn't bother with subtlety, or style. The substance is what he needs, blood and rubble and fire, solid alive awake things to help him confirm the separation between waking and sleeping, dreaming and real. Washing blood and ashes off his hands and down the drain, _that's_ real. When he wakes up from one of those damn dreams, his hands are always clean.  
***  
These are not good dreams. These are not even his dreams. These are the Hood's twisted fantasies, and they're Batman's fault (Bruce's fault) for turning him into this, for making him be this way. Being the Hood is the only way to get Batman (Bruce's) attention, to move him where Jason wants him, to where he can get revenge (forgiveness) (revenge). When Jason puts on the mask he's not himself anymore, he's a goddamn angel of death and vengeance set loose on the city, a wish and a dream made real. Or a nightmare, like the one that keeps chasing him up out of his bed and into the streets.

Maybe that one is Bruce's dream, actually. Maybe he's sending it to transform Jason, slow and steady, like before when he turned a street kid into a wannabe hero. Maybe it's what Bruce wants, to change him again, further, into something bad enough that it can be wiped out and corrected. Maybe he wants Jason to do those things: break Dick and destroy him and become _unforgivable_. Maybe then Bruce thinks he can kill Jason without blinking.

No. Bruce doesn't kill. Batman would be the one. Jason's head aches and spins, masks and faces blurring together. Red Hood kills Nightwing. Batman kills Red Hood. Batman sheds no tears for either.

Bruce Wayne, maybe, mourns for both.  
***  
He _remembers_, is the problem. He remembers everything.

He remembers how to make Wayne Manor _ring_ if he laughs in just the right place on the stairs. He remembers the weight of the cape swirling around his shoulders. He remembers Dick teaching him how to fly.

Part of him wants to go home. Beg forgiveness. Be loved. And part wants to go home, kneel down, beg for death.

And another part, the part in control because it _acts_ instead of crying all the time, wants to go home, strike a match, make them all pay.

He lets that part stay in charge because it's better than the last option, the part of him that he thinks is still working from in the grave. The part that wants not only to make them pay but _break_ them, one by one, without even letting them have a chance to fight back. He could do it. He knows how, down in that part that's still dead. He dreams it every night.

And that scares him a thousand times more than memories of waking up in the grave, because it makes him think he never made it out of the coffin at all.


End file.
